The people who take an active interest in religious-liberty controversies are many, but they are also a minority. And they are a minority that faces hostility from America’s media and lawyer elites. If that minority cannot appeal to the apolitical majority, it will lose. Continue Reading »

Donald Trump's fiercest critics have hoped that his outlandish statements will eventually undo him. Their mistake is that Trump is a creation of America's (and the Republican Party's) political elites. The Trump phenomenon exists because Republican elites scorned large segments of their own . . . . Continue Reading »

Ben Carson might well profit from his presidential campaign, but his conservative supporters have already lost. They have lost by putting their hopes (and their money) in the wrong places. They would still have lost even if Carson had had no flaws as either a candidate or a man. Carson is a flawed . . . . Continue Reading »

Support for Donald Trump exists not despite the crazy, irresponsible things he advocates, but because of them. The voters who support him in the hope that he is as crazy as he sounds are not, themselves, necessarily crazy for doing so. This despite what the early breadth of Trump’s support may . . . . Continue Reading »

A breach has opened between the Republican party’s business interests and the party’s activists. It has always existed, of course, but not so widely as now. While the issue of immigration might be the most significant policy consideration that divides them, there is also a very important institutional divide. The Republican business establishment, from K Street down to the local Chamber of Commerce, has functioning institutions, while the party’s populists do not. This is why conservati Continue Reading »